Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to documenting, authenticating, and retrieving historical information relating to one or more artifacts. The present invention more specifically relates to coupling an artifact to at least one unique identifier that may be attached to or contained within an artifact; such identifiers are coupled to historical information related to the artifact.
Description of the Related Art
Artifacts associated with historical events are frequently prized by collectors of memorabilia. Collectors typically only have limited means of authenticating that a particular artifact is genuine. Conventionally authenticity of an artifact may be established by the presence of a signature on the artifact, the judgment of an expert who has inspected the artifact, or by an owner of the artifact swearing to the authenticity of the artifact.
Frequently artifacts have no inherent identifier that identifies them as being associated with a historical event. For example a baseball hit out of the park by Willie Mays would carry no identification that it was in fact hit by Willie Mays, unless the baseball were subsequently signed by Willie Mays or authenticated by a baseball representative.
A system and method for associating provenance to an artifact would therefore benefit collectors immensely.